A Writing Tool that Adapts to Every Kind of Genealogist

Rarely do I sing the praises of a program as loudly as I sing for the writing software program Scrivener. I have written about Scrivener in the past, Can A Writing Tool Really Help Your Story-This One Can! where I praised its virtues. But I felt it was time to really introduce you to Scrivener up close and personal. And to demonstrate how you can use Scrivener in writing any one of a number of genealogy writing projects.

I believe Scrivener is the ideal writing tool for genealogists, no matter your style of writing or the format of your writing project. Here's a few reasons why!

If you're blogging your family history and plan on turning it into a book, Scrivener can help you plan and execute your blog to book project.

If you're writing a family narrative for a small family book in a simple PDF document or writing a family history memoir to sell across all the ebook formats Scrivener is your tool.

If you're a genealogist looking to publish a non-fiction book Scrivener will handle that for you.

If you write magazine articles, or write for genealogy societies, Scrivener will most definitely be the ideal tool for you. If you write newsletter whether they are family newsletter or blog newsletter Scrivener is your tool.

Not all writers write the same, Scrivener understands this concept. Each of our creative processes are different and we love to create various writing environments. Scrivener gets that.

You the writer don't adapt to Scrivener, Scrivener adapts to you. (Tweet this!)

You create the writing environment and the writing format that meets your specific needs. This is the heart of Scrivener.

So if your intrigued or even in disbelief, let me demonstrate the beauty of this program. Watch the 15 minute mini-webinar below and get acquainted with how Scrivener can meet the needs of the family history writer.

If you would love to give Scrivener a try then please Download Scrivener Now.(affiliate link) A free trial is available.

Watch for future videos in this series Scrivener for the Family History Writer. We will take apart Scrivener piece by piece and show you how to make the most of this project management writing tool for your family history needs.

25 comments:

Lynn, I am so thankful that you've decided to help us out with these videos! While I had started using Scrivener during the Family History Writing Challenge, I have let it set since. Not that I don't still want to use it, but the very things I loved about its ability to help us organize our writing has become my own personal disorganization. I've got the frame in tact...its the note cards and other details along the way that have flown from my computer file and become jumbled on skewed on the "floor!"

Debra, I am happy to accommodate, let's work on this together. The next video will address the corkboard and cue cards and getting your story organized. If your having any specifics questions, let me know I'll address them in the video.

I use Scrivener. I had been using another program that was free but my "style" (yeah right!) of organization works with this program. I decide how I want my family story to go and create chapters and then, change my mind and reorganize it another way. Fortunately with Scrivener, this is easy to do. Now I am adding pictures simply by copying them from my computer and pasting them where I want. I just discovered that they can be edited on the page which makes it so much easier. I am looking forward to your videos as I am quite sure that there are features I haven't even discovered yet.

Hi Ann, nice to hear from you. Would love to hear what aspects of Scrivener you find works for your "style" of writing. Also feel free to point out any features you haven't investigated that I can touch on in the video series. That goes for you to Debra, and anyone else using Scrivener. You can comment hear or send me a direct email if you prefer. I really want this series of videos to meet your specific needs.

Lynn, Thanks so much for any help you can provide on Scrivener. I play with it daily and although I learn something new everyday, someone who knows more would benefit all of us. So here are two of my questions. #1 - How or why would I use project keywords? #2 - I notice the there is a link in format to Bibliography/Citations. This takes me to my computer. Can I setup a link to store my sources and then incorporate it into my book? I have references scattered all over and it would be nice to corral them. As far as style goes, I change my mind daily on how to present the story. I don't know who's prospective will be the most cohesive. I can't use the biological mother, no one will ever know why she abandoned all the kids. We could write about the kids but so much information is missing and may never be found. I am leaning towards the search for the children from my viewpoint and how each of them were discovered. But...that might change later today. :)

Lynn, I have just downloaded Scrivener, and see much potential for my project. However, I am having trouble importing my existing Microsoft Word work. I have a Title Page, a Forward, a Table of Contents, several Chapters, notes, endnotes and references in Word. The Chapters contain about 5,000 words. I'd like to use this same organization or equivalents in Scrivener. How do I bring all of this into a Scrivener Binder, with its Files and Documents?Bob Parker

I have just downloaded Scrivener and see much to like. Problem is, I can't seem to understand how to import my existing MS Word organization into the Scrivener schema. My Word file has a Title Page, a Forward, a Table of Contents, several Chapters, plus notes, endnotes, references, etc. Must I do it page by page and chapter by chapter?Bob Parker

Ann thanks for your questions, I will be sure to address them in upcoming videos. As to your concern with the POV of your story. Without having more intimate knowledge and long discussion with you off the top of my head may I suggest from your point of view or perhaps your journey with flashbacks to the biological mothers time, or your discoveries and long side the one of children life growing up?? How did this all effect them. Do you follow??

Hi Robert, so Scrivener is going create a table of contents and endnotes etc. within the program so some of this may have to be stripped away, but I think the endnotes are the problem. So try converting your word document in an RTF format and see if that works. I assuming this is all one document. It won't divide it into chapters, you'll have to do that within Scrivener, unless you've saved each Chapter as a separate document in which case convert each one into an RTF document and try importing that way. Hope this helps. I'll be sure to add it to my list of things to address, but I hope this gets you up and writing quickly.

Marian, great questions, Scrivener does not have a dashboard, it works much like if you were opening up word, click on file, you can choose from creating new project, opening up a project or you can see a list of recent projects. You can have multiple projects open at once but minimized in your toolbar. As for printing the cards, the index cards are set up to work with Avery Perforated Index Card stock, print them on the card stock or plain paper and then cut them out. Next video will be dedicated to the features of the corkboard. Thanks for the questions.

Lynn! I have Scrivner. I am using it to transcribe my Civil war letters. I use a quick reference panel to do the writing, while having the letter tif file open on the screen. It works like a charm, because the letters need to be enlarged almost to the whole screen in order to decipher them. I have to admit to being a very lazy reader of directions, and you have no idea how much this video helped me. Now, I know how to write the book that I must write about John Goodheart!

Yeh! Ellen, so thrilled to hear you are using Scrivener to write your story as well. Drop me a line if you have any questions, happy to cover them in upcoming videos. Love to hear from you guys who are working away on your stories.

I've had scrivener for awhile, but it has lain dormant. The reason for that is when I corralled my text from MS-WORD,Google docs, my blog, and emails I had a mess of a font issue. Can you address this in a subsequent video?

Your video has me wanting to use the program again! Credit to the presenter!

Hi Michelle. Happy hear your giving Scrivener a try. I'm currently working on the video for the corkboard, should be up in a couple of days and footnotes/endnotes will be ready in a couple of weeks. As to your question there is currently in the works an iOS version for iphone and ipad. The anticipation is for the end of this year. While I think they will be slightly different not everything on a desktop will be available on an iPad. Currently the Windows version will read the Mac files but not all the features are available in Windows that exist on the Mac, so the file may look slightly different. Scrivener also works with Dropbox.

Hi, Lynn. Is Scrivener a program that you download or is it also available as a web app? At present I'm blogging along with a Chromebook prototype from 2010 and a new Chromebox, neither of which allows me to download programs, and I'm hoping to avoid having to buy any new hardware for a while.Thanks,Pam

I'm anxious to try this program but don't see a clear answer that Robert asked. I have too many documents in word with endnotes and photos. Will they convert easily into this software or will I have to redo the endnotes and photos? Thank you for any help

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